Kurdish authorities in northern Syria on Saturday ordered a curfew for the Raqa region ‘until further notice’, as government forces advanced and threatened to bomb sites in the area.

After taking control of territory outside Aleppo city earlier Saturday, the army designated a swathe of Kurdish-held territory in Raqa province southwest of the Euphrates River, including the city of Tabqa, a ‘closed military zone’.

In statements carried on state media, it announced it would target what it said were several military sites in the area—one of them near Raqa city.

The Syrian army had previously told the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to evacuate a part of Aleppo province, with SDF leader Mazloum Abdi agreeing on Friday to pull out of the area to positions east of the Euphrates at what he said was the urging of mediators.

But the SDF accused the authorities on Saturday of breaching the deal, saying Kurdish forces in neighbouring Raqa ‘are currently engaged in intense clashes with factions affiliated with the Damascus government’ in an area south of Tabqa, ‘which was outside the scope of the agreement’.

An army statement carried by state media urged the SDF leadership to ‘immediately fulfil its announced commitments and fully withdraw to the east of the Euphrates River’, calling for it to evacuate its fighters from Tabqa.

The army also said it had taken control over Raqa province’s Resafa area and several nearby villages.

Raqa province was formerly the Islamic State group’s stronghold in Syria before its territorial defeat in a battle spearheaded by the SDF with the support of an international coalition.

The authorities are seeking to extend their control over all of Syria, and the push to retake parts of Aleppo province followed days of clashes in the city of the same name that saw Kurdish fighters cede the last two neighbourhoods they controlled there.

On Friday, president Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a decree declaring Kurdish a ‘national language’ and granting the minority official recognition in an apparent goodwill gesture, though the Kurds said it fell short of their aspirations.

The United States for years has supported the Kurds but also backs Syria’s new authorities, and US envoy Tom Barrack was in Erbil on Saturday to meet with Mazloum Abdi, head of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, a source in the presidency of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region told AFP.

An AFP correspondent in Deir Hafer, some 50 kilometres east of Aleppo city, saw several SDF fighters leaving the town and a large number of residents who had fled the area returning, under a heavy presence of soldiers and security forces.

Syria’s Islamist-led government is seeking to extend its authority across the country following the ousting of longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in late 2024.

Progress on implementing a March deal to integrate the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and forces into the state has stalled amid differences between the two sides, including the Kurds’ demand for decentralised rule.

Sharaa’s announcement on Friday was the first formal recognition of Kurdish rights since Syria’s independence in 1946.

The decree stated that Kurds are ‘an essential and integral part’ of Syria, where they have suffered decades of marginalisation and oppression under former rulers.

It made Kurdish a ‘national language’ that can be taught in public schools in areas where the community is heavily present, and granted nationality to all Kurds, 20 per cent of whom had been stripped of it under a controversial 1962 census.

The Kurdish administration in Syria’s north and northeast said the decree was ‘a first step; however, it does not satisfy the aspirations and hopes of the Syrian people’.